Developer Madfinger suffered a bit of backlash a few days ago when they slashed the price of their mega-smash hit Dead Trigger to the low price of free. Customers who originally purchased the title when it was first released for 99 cents felt duped by the developer not because they could’ve used that money to buy a McDouble — but it was because of the principle.

In an attempt to right their wrongs, Madfinger is gearing up to offer a “reward” for early adopters in an upcoming update as a way of showing their thanks and even though they were mum on details, it will hopefully be enough to redeem the developer’s reputation within the Android community. Class act, that Madfinger. We’ll keep you posted.

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What they did with making it free was just publicity stunt. Because they want more on in-app purchase.

Certainly that is not related to piracy like what they claimed. Otherwise, they will make free all their games.

I bought Shadow Gun, and I love it.

But, that’s all … I won’t support this developer anymore.

http://stevealbright.com Steve Albright

I beg to differ. eh?

From a developer perspective trying to please every customer is very hard. It doesn’t matter what you end up doing, you will always anger a small user base. This issue with dropping the price to free was most likely a timing issue. Sure, they may have wanted more in app purchases but every developer wants more success… in most cases it’s a business model to make money to essentially feed their family!

If they would have reduced the price a few months from now to free, those early adopters would have not felt so taken. Even so, okay… timing was off. It’s .99 cents… soda’s cost $1.25 and are “discharged” out by end of day. The developer even went extra steps in trying to make it right by “gearing up to offer a ‘reward’ to early adopters”, which is pretty cool IMO. Actually, it kind of makes me upset I waited until now to try this game out. :(

…with all that being said, I respect this developer as I feel they are trying to make as many users (aka customers) as they can happy.

UniBroW

I don’t care that I spent my dollar and it went free less than 30 days later, if anything I’m actually glad I was able to support them to some degree because I’m not big on the in app purchases. Mostly because, in some situations, you wipe your data and your in app purchases are gone and you may have to repurchase them.

http://stevealbright.com Steve Albright

Once you purchase in app purchases… you should be able to download them again under that same account.. if not something is wrong.

UniBroW

That’s the thing I don’t like about in app purchases, that isn’t always the case. Robotek, for instance, doesn’t work this way. I’m sure if I emailed the developer there’s a solution and I’ll do that but it’s just an annoying step, especially when you play games on multiple devices.

Sent from my Galaxy S II

http://stevealbright.com Steve Albright

I see what you mean. There are two types of in-app billing.
1) Managed per user account
2) Unmanaged

Personally I have not setup in-app billing so I can’t say why the developer would choose Unmanaged but for a game like setup, Google even states this in their docs under Managed per user account:

“The ‘managed per user account’ purchase type is useful if you are selling items such as game levels or application features. These items are not transient and usually need to be restored whenever a user reinstalls your application, wipes the data on their device, or installs your application on a new device.”

I can see the use for both but for game levels or extra enhancements to the app in general, I cant see not using Managed per user account for this type of a setup. Unmanaged I could see being used for more of a one time use kind of scenario. …I just wanted to elaborate on that so it doesn’t scare you away from all in-app billing in any future products that may have a better setup.

ewlung

Hi Steve,

I don’t mind at all with all your reasoning.

The only thing that I do mind is … the fact that they accused Android piracy caused that decision change. And they cant back their claim.

You know, I think it would be better if they said:
“We changed the price from $1 to FREE because we would like to gain more wide acceptance. And we will honor who paid with new content [or anything]”.

Just an example.

That would be elegant and honest.

http://stevealbright.com Steve Albright

I have read their statement and I think customers/users/readers all have misunderstood their initial context. One sentence out of their official announcement is:“However, even for one buck, the piracy rate is soooo giant, that we finally decided to provide DEAD TRIGGER for free.”

What I get out of that alone is… they offered it for almost nothing and piracy is such a big problem, why make the honest people suffer.. we will make it free for everyone.

After user read this and did not interrupt as they intended… they later say they will reward early adopters. So, basically… they do two things to try to please their “honest” customer base and people still give them a hard time.

There is always a better way of doing everything and maybe your quote above would have been better. I just don’t think you should loose respect for any developer (or any business) that is trying to do right.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=57210679 Mike Mouse-Morales

I understand piracy is an issue with Android; however, what I feel is an injustice is the fact they developed the game with a freeimum model in mind. The fact that they had the ingame app purchases built into the .99 cent version of the game makes it clear to everyone (including myself) who bought the game that they had no intention of not making the game free. I don’t fault them for doing it, but the fact that they misled the 500,000+ that bought the game before the game ended up being free is just a slap in the face. With that said I realize everyone’s gotta get paid. I just don’t like being lied to.

http://mitchs.co Mitch Samuels

Dear god you are right. I made a theme, and it’s like people don’t know there are rating stars between 1 and 5. Some douche gave me a 1 because I was missing ONE icon he wanted…

And other people want me to change some icon colors.. I tried that once, and others got mad.

http://stevealbright.com Steve Albright

Sigh, I so know the feeling.

No_Nickname90

Ima be in your shoes one day. I HATE going to Wallpaper downloads and seeing people complain that it “doesn’t open”. That drives me off the wall. Oh and don’t get me started on Widgets.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1911005 Thomas Edwards

Customers are ridiculous, if you’re an early adopter than you pay an early adopter fee, quibbling over 1 dollar is pathetic.

Gladiator_Posse

Whine whine whine…old Tommy Boy is going to complain no matter what. A company wants to connect with their base…how terrible!
You’re just bitter that you didn’t pay the dollar and now you can’t have something…haha.

slsf617

Honestly I didn’t mind giving them the dollar to play the game. Their families need to eat too and some of us played into the stereotype of Android users being cheap especially people saying they need to meet the developers in a back alley. The developer can easily say f Android ascend tell us to develop our own games

TheDrizzle

I agree. I’m very happy that they decided to bring such an awesome game to Android. I never mind paying for a game. What I do mind is paying for the same game over and over, i.e. in app purchases. I make a point NOT to buy anything from developers who go that route (I’m looking at you Gameloft). I would have paid 4 or 5 dollars just to be able to have all the guns/items available to unlock and play the game the way I want.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperElvisfreshlyATT Freshly_Snipes

Exactly. I bought it and I don’t care. I buy IN-App purchases purposely to support them. If someone can’t afford a f*cking dollar then they need not own a phone or a contract. I’m sure they wouldn’t work for free.

http://www.baldypal.com/ BaldyPal

Anyone else getting airpush ads since yesterdays update? I hope the reward is to get rid of those!

TheDrizzle

Does Jellybean’s ability to block notifications from specific apps work on airpush?

http://twitter.com/gamercore Chris Chavez

That it does :)

Big_EZ

Why couldn’t they just release a full game for $4.99 and a free version with in app purchases? I avoid games with IAP. A dollar is not a big deal but I’ll avoid madfinger games if they keep the IAP model.

ColorblindMonk

Were people really freaking out over a dollar? I felt like they should have charged more, ’cause it felt like a steal.

nonemcm

I understand people defending this company for trying to make money. For all its openness, Android is held back because more dev’s can’t earn the dollars that they can with iOS

But this isn’t about price. It’s about the policy and ethics. This game clearly has a business model designed around in-app purchases. Two thing are obvious in these situations: First, you want it to be free to get people addicted and spend more in the game; Second, like any big release people WILL spend money up front to be the first to play. So they essentially charged the early adopters KNOWING that they would have to drop the price once the initial wave of buyers slowed down. Okay, I can even live with that.

So how do you save face when you know you’re gouging initial buyers? Easy – blame some outside force. Piracy was a scape goat here. They threw the Android ecosystem under the bus via slander to rake in money from their most excited fans. Sleazy.

I almost bought it. But I was smart enough to read comments and reviews before hand, therefore I saw the writing on the wall.

Dudditz09

Paid 75p (or there abouts) for it in the UK and thought it was fantastic value for the game. Honestly not fussed that it is now free, still feel I got great value for money.

TylerChappell

I paid for it, glad to see them doing this though. Days later though after they made it for free, the refund button was available to me in the play store, but pressing it didnt seem to do anything.